Wednesday, 31 January 2018

Online Advertising: Facebook Says 'NO' to Cryptocurrency in New Policy

As part of an ongoing effort to improve the integrity and security of ads and to make it harder for scammers to profit from a presence on its platform, Facebook has banned advertisers entirely from advertising bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

In the new addition to the company’s advertising policy, the decision was as a result of biting indictment of the crazed cryptocurrency market which has been fuelled by intense speculation in recent months, and the large number of scams it has attracted.

“We’ve created a new policy that prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency,” Facebook said in a blog post.

According to Rob Leathern, Facebook’s Product Management Director in a recent post, “We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.

This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network and Instagram.”

He continues “We also understand that we may not catch every ad that should be removed under this new policy, and encourage our community to report content that violates our Advertising Policies. People can report any ad on Facebook by clicking on the upper right-hand corner of the ad.